Proselytizing - a question of ethics/morality

[Daisy]

What is it when a group of young christians go to a third world country, and build something very important for the community they visit (like a fresh water well), but also go with the intention of bringing "christ" to the people they visit?

An act of unselfish love...not only do they give them the opportunity to better their lives now, but they give them the opportunity to better their lives forever...

 

[Metanoia]

What is it when a group of young christians go to a third world country, and build something very important for the community they visit (like a fresh water well), but also go with the intention of bringing "christ" to the people they visit?

And what is it when a group of young atheists do the same ?

 

[zyzygy]

And what is it when a group of young atheists do the same ?

The same, but no crap about Christ.

 

[Dragonfly]

And what is it when a group of young atheists do the same ?

A sincere project, without an anterior (potentially selfish) motive.

 

[Dragonfly]

*ulterior motive

 

[bluesmoke]

That is proselytising though.

It's a shame some people make a scary monster of an innocent word. People don't have a problem with ideologies being spread and they little care about the mass manipulation that is done by the media every day. What they have a problem with is religion. I think it's because they know their rejection of God is dishonest.

However, limiting the freedom to proselytize religion, would be a step toward intolerance in general. How could religion be considered backward and the prohibition of proselytizing not be considered backward?

Proselytizing is not arguing meaning of the Gospels. It is an attempt to convert someone from one religion to another, in this context to Christianity (Protestant "Evangelicalism"), and commonly not necessarily from any actual religion nor coming into an actual religion . That is a distinct diff. If you use the Gospels for the purpose, in whatever way, to convert someone, then that is not evangelism nor evangelicalism.

 

[bluesmoke]

What is it when a group of young christians go to a third world country, and build something very important for the community they visit (like a fresh water well), but also go with the intention of bringing "christ" to the people they visit?

Then that group is following the teachings of Christ. Neither evangelicalism nor proselytizing. Building something for others as you describe is doing good works when doing so in the name of the Lord. BTW, I made an ooops on my post to which you are responding. "Evangelizing" is evangelism and does not have to be religious, though it can be. It's just bringing others into their group of common beliefs by sharing those beliefs to find if they agree. At least, that's what I get. Evangelicalism is Christian.

 

[weaver2]

Some pretty rude, smug, interfering and judgmental badgering is justified by claiming self-righteously the Bible tells us to spread the "Good Word". Frankly a lot of the subjects that people get badgered with in the name of proselytizing have nothing to do with the Bible, the Good Word, Jesus and there's an excess of the "you're going to Hell" if you don't accept what I'm telling you.

 

[Valery]

there's an excess of the "you're going to Hell" if you don't accept what I'm telling you.

Do you actually hear people say that?

Frankly a lot of the subjects that people get badgered with in the name of proselytizing have nothing to do with the Bible, the Good Word,

What do they talk about?

 

[weaver2]

Do you actually hear people say that?What do they talk about?

Terry Hughes award winning professor of geology at U of Maine would stand outside the abortion clinic in Bangor, every Thursday screaming at women telling them that God hated them and they were going to hell. He stood outside St. John Catholic Church every Sunday showing pictures of blood soaked 8th month fetuses telling women they were going to Hell until the parents of young children objected and he had to leave. He moved to the corner of State and Holbrook and added a rubber dummy of a fetus which he used to twirl around his head as he shouted at women.

You can google Terry Hughes to corroborate all of this. Oh, yeah he stood outside the student union on campus once a month and did his thing.

He's dead now but there are a bunch of fat ladies and snd sulky looking girls in long dresses and knotted up hair doing the same thing. They even use some of his old signs.